


THE S.CREW CATALOGUE

by executrix



Category: Firefly
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-10
Updated: 2010-06-10
Packaged: 2017-10-16 01:49:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/167125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jayne finds a way to earn a few honest credits. Simon unwisely insists on emulating him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	THE S.CREW CATALOGUE

  


_Your worship was the last man in our mouths_ (The Merchant of Venice)

 _Go down upon him—you have power enough_ (Henry V)

1.  
“Do it better’n me? Hell, you couldn’t do it at all,” Jayne said. “G’wan, I double-dog-dare ya.”

“Yeah?” Simon said. “Yeah? Which one of us has an extensive professional knowledge of reproductive physiology? And did a Psych rotation with patients whose **reality** went way, way beyond your wildest fantasies, and I had to sit there and listen to their **fantasies**?”.

“Which one of us uses real short words?” Jayne asked.

2.  
They could have been Up—Mal could have refused to stay in bed to coddle a mere bullet wound and compound fracture of his left leg and simple fracture of his right when they were spaceborne just as well as when they were Down—but everyone except Mal agreed with Simon that access to backup healthcare was a good idea. And this way, they didn’t burn much fuel, and there were ample local supplies of inexpensive fresh food, so they could conserve their stores.

The Shepherd took it as a Teachable Moment to promote his long-range plan of Occasionally Doing Something Legal. He lined up a few mechanic jobs for Kaylee (with Zoe along to have her back). Kaylee’s reputation soon spread, and the mule was in constant demand to ferry Kaylee to her gigs. When he wasn’t driving, Wash took up cross-country running, training for the Lilac Half-Marathon to raise money for Bowden’s Disease research.

There wasn’t anybody around who was remotely able to hire a Companion, but Inara did very well out of addressing the Ladies’ Garden Club and the Opera Guild and the most exclusive boutique in town. She sold an ungodly amount of little pots of face cream, whipped up by River under the strictest of ongoing supervision.

It was also Inara who, via a friend of a friend, who knew somebody, obtained for Jayne an assignment that, although not strictly illegal, was on the sketchy side. What Inara did not predict (although River could have told her) was that Simon would be irresistibly tempted to compete with Jayne on a turf where Simon could not win. Or break even. Or leave the game.

3.  
“Hey, you’re Big Knife’s boyfriend, aren’t you?” asked Maureen, the Office Manager, showing him to his cubicle.

“That statement needs, well, it needs about three pages of caveating,” Simon said.

“Lucky boy,” Maureen said, extracting a large wad of bubble gum and daintily enfolding it in a pink “While You Were Out” message slip.

Wondering which one she meant, Simon said, “But, uh, thanks”.

“OK, now about your handle?” Maureen asked.

Simon blinked. “Maybe everybody was tactful, but I haven’t really had a lot of complaints,” he said.

“No, I mean, y’know, your stage name. Did you have one in mind?”

Simon shook his head.

“Well, it could be….like, your first pet, and the street you lived on when you were a kid.”

“A hamster!” Simon said, his eyes lighting up. “Her name was Paradimethylaminobenzaldehyde. My kid sister came up with the name. And, well, it wasn’t on a street with a name as such, but the **house** was called Harmonious Peony…”

“Uh-huh,” Maureen said. “OK, we’ll go with Lord Fauntleroy. Like your guy said.”

4.  
“So, now you seen how the other half lives,” Jayne said.

“It was depressingly familiar,” Simon said. “When I was a PGY-2, I had a cubicle just like that at Disney Hospital. Same kind of Telefonix. Same kind of gray fabric on the cubicle walls. Except I always had a pile of folders that I was supposed to be working up…collating lab reports, filling out the insurance paperwork…”

5.  
Although he was genuinely touched by the gift that Kaylee built for him, Mal was not, overall, in a good mood. So when (clad in the bottom half of one of Wash’s shattering cabana sets), he finished his therapeutic regime of swimming a mile against the strong current of the eight-foot-long lap pool, he gritted his teeth as Inara twitched the fringe of her shawl away from contact with his damp body.

And when she said, “Oh, Mal, I’m devastated by the role I played in undermining your authority by showing how much better your crew can do when they’re making their own decisions,” he just shrugged and stumped off, jabbing his cane into the floor of the Cargo Bay, skipping his weight-lifting session.

Swimming hard, going nowhere, and in ugly trunks to boot. His life, in a nutshell.

Not that Mal was the only one to use the pool. Kaylee said she had never had a chance to learn to swim, and it was real shiny, and the fact that there was no risk of drowning in the shallow water when you didn’t have much privacy ever just meant that Mal and the crew were looking out for her. River synchronized to a different drummer. The Shepherd said that the warmth of the water penetrated all the way to the core of his old bones. Also, because of the guilt-stricken multiplication of containers of pool cleaner, Mal suspected that such of his crew as were getting sexed up with each other were doing it in his pool. At least they had the decency to clean up after themselves.

6.  
Before Simon could ask (although it was an obvious deduction, nothing necessarily preternatural about it) River flipped up the large book so Simon could see the cover: Shao-Hua Chou’s “Anatomy for Artists.”

“There’s one head between the navel and the crotch,” she said.

Simon blushed.

7.  
Simon did not at all approve of Jayne, Jayne’s values, or Jayne’s Weltanschauung, which more often than sometimes involved actual welts. Back in the day, when he still had a job, a bank account, and an actuarially measurable life expectancy, Simon’s better judgment would have kept him tricking around with people he had a lot more respect for. Although over time Simon had developed a degree of admiration for Jayne’s naïve storytelling and flights of fantasy—a sort of verbal Outsider Art—most of him did not even like Jayne.

However, if the past months had taught Simon anything, it was that he lived, precariously, at the mercy of a pitiless oligarchy that cared less than none at all for the will of the majority.

So he didn’t like Jayne, but his dick sure did.

8.  
For Simon’s first assignment, Maureen gave him The Breather, who was an undemanding customer suitable for an apprentice.

Simon, the pulse hammering in his throat, picked up the phone and listened to the breathing. “Uh-huh,” he said. Close off your right nostril with you index finger. Good. Now release it and close off your left nostril.”

The Breather, captivated by the compassionate yet authoritative tone, and also wondering if someone had invented a new kink and not told him about it, complied.

“Now close off both your nostrils and breathe through your mouth—well, more than you were doing at first,” Simon said, reflexively reaching for a casefile folder or at least an Encyclopedia and stylus. “Okay. Now cough.”

Simon closed his eyes and mentally flipped through the flash cards in the Pulmonary Differential Diagnosis set. “Have you been vaccinated—with all the booster shots—against Appleseed Fever? Are you running a temperature? Any flank pain? Have you had any occupational exposure to dust, metal filings, radiation, heavy metals…”

Simon looked down at the Telefonix. The green light had gone out.

9.  
“What do you look like?” the caller asked.

“I’m, uh, I’m not very tall,” Simon said. “The only thing unusual that you might notice, is that I have blue eyes, even though I have dark hair.” (Simon was reassured that, as a training device for the clients’ imaginations, the viewport of the Telefonix was disabled and, in any case, he thought the odds were against the callers having access to the Warrants database.)

This did not give the caller much to work with.

“Do you like to suck cock?” he asked.

“Dangh ran!” Simon said cheerfully.

“When was the last time you did it?”

“Thursday…well, I guess it was more like Friday, it was about three a.m.”

“Was it really, really big?”

“It’s not **petite** but the way he carries himself, you’d think he’d need a wheelbarrow….”

The caller, having decided that there was no point in keeping a dog and barking yourself, especially when your credit card was charged by the minute, hung up.

10.  
“Sliding down the banister at GrandMere’s house!” River told Simon. “So smooth between your legs and it’s fun that it’s dangerous even though the butler always came and made you stop it before you broke your skull.”

Simon just nodded, although a faint flame of hope still lived in his heart that that was going to prove to have something to do with something.

11.  
“I’m enjoyin’ that there Job Satisfaction,” Jayne told Simon. “Sort of poetic-like, thinkin’ of all them dicks wavin’ in the air and gettin’ shot off just listenin’ to me. Like…a forest. And me Paul Bunyan.”

Simon didn’t think “forest” was entirely inaccurate. Jayne’s body could reasonably be analyzed into solidities of trunk and limbs. The patches of hair on Jayne’s body were soft under Simon’s hand, like fallen leaves underfoot, and Jayne had scented his bunk with a spicy, reassuring smell of time and smoke. {{Mahogamy}}, Simon thought muzzily, wrapping his hand around what might have been an immemorial redwood in a clearing. {{Felling only one tree}}.

Jayne’s body generously gave off heat, and even under the ratty blanket, Simon stretched out and felt properly warm for the first time since his nineteenth re-reading of River’s letter about the D’Arbanvilles’ ball.

Recently, Jayne and Simon had reached an accommodation. They had not, in the strictest Freudian sense, buried the hatchet, because Jayne did not take it up the scabbard. Simon, so far, insisted on a chance of reciprocation, or at the very least a formal introduction, although he suspected that ongoing residence on Serenity would lead to further erosion of his standards.

That still left a certain amount of repertoire. The other three times they had had sex, Jayne made several references to hurrying it up and getting down to work. Simon said that of course, they should rush through the trivial chore of having sex so as not to interrupt their usual program of staring at the wall. (This was an exaggeration: Simon had a whole basket of socks supplied by the crew, because he was by far the best at picking out the darning wool and unraveling the wool to be knit again. He was also the best at knitting socks. Inara was no slouch either, although it was either a Freudian slip or an act of covert aggression that time that she washed the recycled yarn in hot water. The red bled into the gray, yielding a shocking pink that Mal wouldn’t be caught dead in.)

Simon was gratified that this time, he didn’t have to reassert that argument, and they could cut right to not cutting to the chase. He sat up, and slid to the bottom of the bed. He lifted Jayne’s feet onto his lap, and began to knead the arches, looking down at the circumflex toes, the product of growing up in last year’s boots. Then he bent, and began nuzzling and licking up the monumental legs. Then Simon broke loose, sliding out from underneath, and knelt up, clasping a Cobb thigh between both his own. He tilted his hands forward, circling Jayne’s chest.

He really enjoyed rocking there, but what really put the daffy smile on his face (not, properly speaking, a grin, because his teeth—which Jayne quite admired—were not to be seen) was realizing just what River had meant about the banister. He was not entirely comfortable with having a precognitive voyeur on his case, but at least she wasn’t crazy. Or not entirely, 100% of the time. He slid back down, resting his head on Jayne’s admirably modeled abdomen, fulfilling the prediction of artistic anatomy. After drawing a few meditative breaths of comfort, he at last began to do something whose description had commercial value.

Jayne continued to lie there, albeit appreciatively. “It’s casual sex, Jayne, not a genius grant,” Simon said, lifting his head and then putting Jayne’s hand where he had been wont to place his own when envisioning a rather more glamorous version of this encounter. “You can’t just rest on your laurels.”

12.  
Having already said grace before the meal, accompanied by Kaylee and Jayne, Shepherd Book raised his speckled tin mug in Wash’s direction to thank him for an exceptionally fine meal.

When Wash got back to Serenity that afternoon, it was obvious that he carried a roughly woven basket, with what looked like a wooden lid on top. The lid turned out to be a huge round loaf of bread. The basket was full of tomatoes, irregular and looking as if they’d been under a barstool on U-Day. They were soft enough to cradle a cardboard carton of a dozen eggs.

“Damn!” Jayne said, making explicit what was on everybody’s mind, dazzled by a place where there were enough eggs institutionalize a thing to carry them in.

Wash made a pot of rosemary-scented tomato sauce, scooped holes in its bubbling surface, and poached the eggs in it. Kaylee hovered over him, making sure that he saved and rinsed the tomato seeds. She also appropriated the egg carton and the eggshells to start tomato seedlings for the hydroponic tank she decided to weld out of some scrap metal in the engine room.

“But that’s the thing about these farm moons,” Kaylee said. “It’s the factory stuff that’s expensive. If I’d needed a coil starter or an E-209 fuse, they’d a charged me as much as if it was made of….butter.”

13.  
The next day, spreading virally among the cubicles of such employees of the S. Crew Catalogue who did Outcalls as well as just plain Calls, were offers to go to the client’s house and rest on his laurels. Although that carried a Supplement, like foie gras.

14.  
The conversation went by fits and starts, because Wash and Simon took turns carrying the vacuum sweeper unit and stretching out the long hose and cleaning the decks and walls. Wash, not unexpectedly, improvised some kind of dragon scenario. Simon was just glad that he didn’t have to turn into a tentacle-sex roleplay.

“Y’know,” Wash said, as they trudged down the corridor, looking for the next electrical outlet, “When I first met you, I’d have laughed myself silly about you getting yourself into this situation, but now that I actually know you, I mean, what…the…fuck?”

“Wash,” Simon said, shaking his head. “The person that I have to be now can’t afford to have any standards, including standards about not doing things that involve falling on my face.”

15.  
Although Jayne knew that it was the amateurs who tended to get you into all kinds of trouble, from doses to badger games, he was pretty sure that Simon wasn’t going to land him in a shotgun wedding any time soon, and he was real careful about germs. Jayne couldn’t really figure Simon’s motivation, although the Shepherd did once say something about Saint Francis, who as far as Jayne could remember was a rich guy who had a thing about taking off his clothes and giving stuff to poor folks. Also something about animals, and Jayne had heard Simon mention hamsters at least twice in a rather small store of reminiscences about his pre-Serenity life.

16.  
“I could hear you, uhh, **rumbling** over in that cubicle, and it sounded like you were talking about deer hunting,” Simon said, muffled by the shirt he was pulling back on. (Since his first Ward Rounds in MedAcad, Simon had been able to awake from delta sleep and get dressed in seconds, unless he had been sleeping in his clothes. His sojourn on Serenity had convinced Simon that the shirt was the last piece of clothing to be resumed—shoes and trousers were far more mission-critical when it was **your** life you were likely to be running for at a moment’s notice.)

Jayne was hurt, or perhaps shocked, by the amount of pure heathen ignorance stalking the ‘Verse. “Moose!” he said.

“Okay. But my point is that Maureen said you kept the guy on the phone for an **hour and a half**. Basically, by giving him a blow-by-blow account, practically in real time, of standing around in the woods **doing nothing**.”

“Yeah, well, first of all, there was lots to talk about in terms of terrain, preparation, selection of ammunition. And he’s one o’them pansy-ass bow hunters, so fuck him anyway. And besides, why’s Mal gotta be the only thief on this boat?”

PS--lunabee34, thanks for the virtual lemur! Hope the virtual puppy doesn't eat it...


End file.
